The present invention relates in general to fuel supply control systems for multiple poultry brooders in a brooder house or poultry house installation, and more particularly to automatic gas fuel supply control systems for multiple poultry brooders and to multiple brooder installations wherein dual zone control can be provided providing the option of controlling gas brooders with thermostats at plural locations in the brooder house for large installations where variations in temperature at different parts of the brooder house may occur.
Heretofore, many different types of poultry brooders have been provided, some of which are of the hot water heated type, others of which are of the electrically heated type, and the most common of which are gas burner heated types. The present application has to do with the gas burner types of brooders provided with controls for regulating the supply of the gaseous fuel, and which are connected together to a single source of fuel supply. It will be understood that brooders of the type here concerned are suspended, for example by chain and sometimes pulley type suspension systems, or otherwise conventionally supported, at spaced intervals throughout a poultry house or brooder house to enable the young chicks to keep warm. The brooders are conventionally arranged in a long series of brooders spaced conventionally about 24 - 30 inches above the litter material, usually formed from wood chips, sawdust, corn cobs and the like covering the floor of the poultry house, with the brooders alined in one or more rows extending the length of the brooder house and typically spaced from each other, for example, with their centers located about 6-10 feet apart for brooders having a hover or canopy about 4 feet in diameter. Frequently the brooder houses are 300 feet or more in length, which would call for about 30 to 40 brooders in each row spanning the length of the brooder house, and in many very large or long brooder house installations, rows of up to about 76 brooders may be called for.
One severe problem that has been encountered in connection with multiple gas burning poultry brooder installations having automatic thermostatic controls for regulating the gas fuel supply to the brooder burners in accordance with the space temperature in the brooder house has been that such multiple brooder installations, conventionally having electrical thermostat controls, are critically dependent on non-interruption of the electrical supply to the brooder house. In many rural areas, however, electrical power supply is much less dependable than in the more populated regions, and a failure of the electrical power to the brooder house, during cold weather seasons, may be fatal to large numbers of the chicks since loss of electrical power disables the thermostatic control of the gas fuel supply. Some efforts have been made to alleviate this problem by providing manually operated bypass systems for the automatic controls for the brooders, but this requires that a human operator be able to promptly manually shift the brooder controls over to manual bypass condition within a short period of time after the power failure occurs, if the brooder temperatures are to be maintained at levels which will not injure the chicks.
An object of the present invention is the provision of a gas fuel supply control system for multiple gas burning poultry brooders in a large brooder installation, wherein the gas supply control system is capable of controlling a large number of brooders in a series and has means automatically operative without electrical supply to effect temperature controlled regulation of the gas supply to the brooders in the series in the event an electrical power failure disables conventional electrical thermostatic gas control means for the series of brooders causing a predetermined small reduction in temperature in the brooder region.
Another object of the present invention is the provision of a plurality of gas burner type brooders connected in series to a common temperature responsive electrical thermostatic type gas supply control for normally regulating the gas supply to the brooder burners to maintain predetermined temperature levels in the brooder house, in association with a self-actuating temperature sensitive bypass control responsive to contraction of a temperature sensitive fluid in a fluid circuit including a sensing bulb to automatically open a bypass gas supply circuit to the brooder burners and automatically effect temperature sensitive regulation thereof responsive to lowering of the temperature in the brooder house to a predetermined level slightly below the normal temperature being maintained by the electrical thermostatic control system.
Another object of the present invention is the provision of a plural zone control system for a plurality of gas burner type brooders wherein brooders are arranged in plural series or groups of interconnected brooders each series or group of which have a common electrical thermostatic regulated gas fuel supply control for the brooder burners of the associated group together with a self-actuating bypass control operated by a temperature sensitive fluid upon occurrence of brooder house temperatures signifying electrical power failure to take over temperature regulation of the brooder burners during the period the electrical power failure persists. With such a system, zone control can be achieved in the brooder house by a plurality of thermostats each associated with respective sets or groups of the brooders to achieve more effective maintenance of desired temperatures at all regions of a large brooder house.
Other objects, advantages and capabilities of the present invention will be apparent from the following detailed description, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings illustrating preferred embodiments of the invention.